


To a New Horizon

by mothdogs



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Sentient TARDIS, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:13:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22840774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothdogs/pseuds/mothdogs
Summary: The Eleventh Doctor is haunted by humans. Will a decent night's sleep help ease his restless mind?
Relationships: The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	To a New Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Set before the events of the Christmas special "The Snowmen." Pre-Clara.

To a New Horizon

***

**_“The stars are apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same ones at the same moment?” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden_ **

***

There’s a cramp in the Doctor’s leg that he’s been ignoring for twenty-two minutes and eight seconds now—he’s tucked into himself on the couch, reading glasses perched on his nose. The TARDIS’ lights are low and winking softly, with a discontented sort of irregular hum coming from the console room that he also ignores. He frowns at the pages of the book curled in his hand, his ability to focus on it beyond threadbare, and wills the words to start making sense again. It’s a book he grabbed at random from the library shelf an hour ago, not even noting the title until he’d returned to the worn divot on the couch in the sitting-room: _Walden, or Life in the Woods_ , by the human philosopher Thoreau. Simplistic and self-focused, but solitary in a way that echoes his own circumstances. And, the Doctor has to admit, endearingly human.

As he stares at the pages, the book’s meaning slides around in his brain like an egg in a shell. Page 93: _Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in_. The Doctor lets a puff of air out of his nose at this. Thoreau was, for his time, saying something damned clever about the nature of eternity, but he mentioned his location every other page. _My purpose for going to Walden Pond_ …

Pond, Pond, Pond. There is no escape from her, from thoughts of her and Rory both. The Doctor looks around the sitting-room and aches for her to be cross-legged on the couch beside him. He pictures them now in some cramped Manhattan flat, propped around a table or curled together in bed. Maybe at this minute they’re reading, or playing a board game, or talking, or looking for work, or—

( _Pond, Pond, Pond._ )

He snaps the book shut with a grunt of frustration. Stands, leg now screaming as he presses weight onto it, abandoning the book cover-down on the couch. One part of him, a distant part that wants to fight the oppressive ache, seems to watch from above. That part knows he should be flinging himself around the control console. He should be careening through open space _right now_ , sightseeing at a world a billion light-years from Earth. He should be spinning large around a forgotten planet, as far as can be from his memories of the Earth and its humans—

Still, even the thought of it exhausts him. He knows the TARDIS is lonely and bored, but he can’t take care of her right now. Can barely take care of himself. His hands don’t want to work the console controls. His mind rebels at remembering distant star-maps, and instead plods dully in circles, retreating to— 

( _Raggedy man, goodbye!)_

the Pond. There’s one thing that might help, more than listless reading and pacing and innumerable cups of tea gone cold and untouched. He heads away from the sitting-room and its view of the console.

Down the corridor, a turn to the right, and then he’s standing in front of the cabinet with the medical supplies. He’s never actually had a need for them—the wraps are dusty, the pills still sealed in their bottles. He’d asked the TARDIS to procure a new medicine cabinet when Rose was traveling with him, terrified of the thought that she might take a blast from a Dalek or get a burn from exploding Slitheen goo, or worse. Didn’t matter in the end, though—there’s no antiseptic patch to unmake a parallel universe.

His lips go numb when the memory of Rose’s blonde hair flits through his brain, but he licks them and pushes some of the bottles out of the way. A few fall onto their sides, but he leaves them. Simple human painkillers and anti-allergens. He doesn’t plan to need those again, not soon at least, maybe not ever. At last he finds the bottle he’s looking for and turns back, leaving the cupboard door hanging open. He’s three steps down the corridor when he hears the cupboard click shut behind him, almost indignantly. At that he stops, the pills rattling in the bottle as he turns his forehead to the closest wall and closes his eyes.

“I am sorry, old girl,” he says to the TARDIS in a low voice, “But I need to rest. Just give me a little while. We can get off this cloud soon, if you’d like. We can go away, just you and me.” The lights in the hallway pulse slightly brighter, a blue washing over his face, and he smiles fondly. Kisses his palm and presses it onto her wall.

The Doctor returns to his worn place on the couch. He stands with his hands before him for a moment, swaying, deciding, then sets his mouth in determination. _This will work_. _No dreaming, just sleeping. Please._

He tosses the bottle onto the couch, next to Thoreau. Reaches a hand up to remove Amy’s glasses, folding them reverently and placing them on the nearest table. As he lies back on the dark green velvet and arranges a throw pillow under his head, his heartbeats thud dully in his ears.

The bottle came from the markets near Akhaten, bought ages ago in some fit of preternatural precaution. He can’t even remember now what he’d traded to get it. But the small oblong pills inside the bottle contain a psychic dampener that would knock out even the stiffest of Gallifreyans—sleeping pills, extra-strength, specially formulated for physiologies like his. He’d never used one before, even when he’d regenerated into the version with the buzzcut and the big ears and the excess of self-loathing. Probably should have, though. He rarely ever sleeps—a cat nap here and there—but maybe it would help.

He swallows two of the pills dry. From his reclined position, he stares straight up, one arm crooked behind his head. Imagines the TARDIS’ ceiling is gone and he’s staring out into the universe forever. He tries to remember which star systems would lie in that direction, but his mind is hazing up, as if the clouds outside are somehow roiling in through the closed front doors. The TARDIS’ lights blink rhythmically, in time with the twin thudding of his hearts, and the darkness takes him before his eyes slip fully closed. 

***

His time-sense is always with him, even in sleep. It only goes fuzzy when he’s in the middle of a regeneration. It’s how he knows that he’s drifted unconscious for nearly seven hours before the dreams start spinning out around him. Seven hours of unadulterated blackness is, apparently, all the rest the dampening pills can manage to give him.

But eventually the blackness gives way to a wash of colorful light, and faces start sliding past him at a high speed. It’s almost as if he’s the TARDIS herself in this dream as he hurtles through some sort of vortex where he can see faces peering at him from all sides. Not only humans, either—he turns to look and gets green glints of Silurians, brown-and-bronze Daleks, even the paunchy bug-eyed face of Blon. He also sees the circular crests of High Gallifreyan collars, but if any of his kinsmen are there they keep to the shadows, just out of his field of view. They’re watching as if he’s a fish sliding through a tank. They’re watching as if passing judgement. 

The fishtank vortex dream unravels back into darkness, and the Doctor finds his legs and walks forward into a white-and-green hallway where fluorescent lights buzz. It could easily be a generic hospital corridor, but the scent of it is antiseptic and somehow familiar, half-remembered from his newly-regenerated nostrils. _Pond, Pond, Pond_. It’s the Leadworth hospital where Rory works. Worked.

The hospital is empty, but there’s a patient room to his right. He turns to peer into the doorway, but Rory is already standing there in his nurse’s scrubs. Rory’s face is lit with an almost beatific smile, and he cradles a bundle of wriggling cloth in his arms. He proffers the bundle, saying, “This is my daughter, Doctor—do you want to meet her?” As the Doctor reaches to uncover the bundle, his mouth forms the word _River_ , but the word that comes out is _Melody_.

He doesn’t even get a chance to see her face. As soon as he nudges the corner of the baby blanket aside, both River and Rory dissolve into a shimmering golden light, which spills down and splashes over the Doctor’s shoes, fizzling out in little glints and sparkles. He watches its progress in amazement, a hand curled half-open in the air, still reaching, when a scuffling sound draws his attention around to his left.

There—at the end of the corridor—a flash of red hair under a navy boggan whips around the corner away from him. He spots a wellie-covered foot disappearing as well. Young Amy, then. He runs, shouting

( _POND!_ )

for her, his shouts echoing down the years: “Wait for me! Pond, come back!”

He skids around the corner, and she’s there in the middle of the hallway. Taller now. His Amy. She stands, shivering and resplendent, looking at him with her wide green eyes, legs tensed like she’s going to turn and bolt again. He reaches out a hand to her: “Come along, Pond, _please!_ ” The words ring panicky in his ears. 

Amy doesn’t say anything, only gives him a rueful smile. She shoves something into his outstretched hand. He looks down and sees that his fingers are curled around bouquet of sunflowers, their petals gleaming with droplets of water as if freshly misted. He looks up again with confusion, lips parted to ask some question, any question, but her hair is flashing red again and she’s turning away.

His other hand shoots out, fighting dream-inertia. Catches her shoulder. Her hair brushes his fingers, but it’s different. Thicker. He turns the shoulder, but Amy is gone. It’s Donna looking at him now. His DoctorDonna, still in the brown jacket she wore the day she saved the universe. The dream is going tattered at the edges now and the hospital is silent but he swears he can hear an Ood singing somewhere.

Donna’s eyes are panicked and tearful as her gaze falls on him, but she doesn’t seem surprised by his new face. Instead she gasps and falls to her knees on the scuffed linoleum, a hand reaching out to cling to his leg, and he wants to crush her in his arms and hold her and help her, but she’s thrashing in pain, shouting—“My head! Oh, Doctor, my head’s killin’ me!”

( _I think you need a_

He stands frozen, dream-logic telling him that he can’t hold her with the sunflowers still in his hand. A bead of blood falls to the floor beside Donna, and he sees as if from a great distance that the blood is his own, and that the flowers in his hand are not sunflowers, but roses. Great pink roses, blooming where Amy’s sunflowers bloomed, with thorns slicing his fingers open. _I need to let go of the roses. Drop them, drop th_

He cannot. 

A rose petal falls off cleanly and drifts to the ground. When it finally lands on the linoleum, Donna is gone. The roses, too, are gone, and the blood is gone, and the corridor is gone, and the hospital is gone, everything is g

***

The Doctor gasps as he sits up, fighting for consciousness like a man heaving himself out of the ocean. His face is wet with ocean, too. He raises a hand to wipe the tears from his cheeks as his hearts beat back down to their normal speed.

The TARDIS ticks and hums around him, her familiarity a balm to his ragged psyche. As he gains his feet, groaning, something in the center console behind him dings. He makes his way in to find that she’s prepared him a cuppa just the way he likes it—black with three fast-dissolving sugars. It sits steaming on a sideboard, having just been procured from the inner workings of the ship. She must have scanned his brain-waves and known he was coming back to consciousness.

He pats her console in thanks, then heads to the front door to get some fresh air. The overhead lights wink blue in assent.

With his hand warm where it’s curled around the mug, he pulls the door open and seats himself at the edge, his feet dangling down into the cloud-platform, pant-legs getting damp. The Doctor closes his eyes to the cool night air, breathes in the scent of rain on the horizon, and lets an idea slowly percolate in his mind. Distantly, from below, he can hear the cries of birds circling the air above London.

Some day, he thinks, he’ll return to Earth again. First, though, there’s something he wants to do.

He wants to point the TARDIS towards a star-scape that hasn’t been charted yet, and he wants to name the new constellations there after his friends. That’s the sort of thing he should have done before they were lost to him—the glorious Ponds, his Rose, Donna, Martha, and Jack. He wants them strung out among the stars like dewdrops in a spider web, woven into the myths and legends of alien civilizations a billion light-years away. It’s not enough, but it’s a gift he can give them.

He sits for a few minutes longer, nursing his tea, thinking about them. His humans. Then, with a little kick at the clouds, the Doctor pulls his feet back into the TARDIS, and makes his way to her console. To a new horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Kora for beta-ing this, and to everyone on the Discord for being so supportive! Find me on Tumblr and Twitter @ mothdogs. <3


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